Teardrop Baby ??

 I came across this in a post recently.
 
 

 The caption under the picture sometimes reads:

"This is a picture of six to seven week old human embryo. It was published in the Bulletin of the Bell Museum of Pathology of the University of Minnesota, Medical School: Autumn, 1972. "

The accompanying text usually consists of the following:

  'Years ago, while giving an anesthetic for a ruptured tubal pregnancy (at two months), I was handed what I believed to be the smallest human being ever seen. The embryo sac was intact and transparent. Within the sac was a tiny (one-third inch) human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid, while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed with long, tapering fingers, feet and toes. It was almost transparent as regards the skin, and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of the fingers.

"The baby was extremely alive and swam about the sac approximately one time per second, with a natural swimmer's stroke. This tiny human did not look at all like the photos and drawings and models of 'embryos' which I had seen, nor did it look like a few embryos I have been able to observe since then, obviously because this one was alive! When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost his life and took on the appearance of what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo at this stage of life (with blunt extremities etc.)."

 I have seen. When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost its life and took on what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo at this stage, blunt extremities, etc.'

 So since the Willke's are involved you should immediately suspect the information presented will stretch the truth   to the breaking point - and in this case you'd be right. There are a number of things wrong with this statement and if there actually is a Paul E. Rockwell, M.D then he should be aware of them.

 First let's look at some infornmation about the terms that are used in ectopic pregnancies. When medical personnel talk about a 'ruptured pregnancy' what they are saying is the sac, which contains the embryo or fetus, has ruptured. So the term  "ruptured tubal pregnancy" in the described circumstances is an incorrect medical term. What is being described is a ruptured 'fallopian tube' that the pregnancy had grown in, and not a 'ruptured pregnancy'. The sac, which would grow and stretch with the embryo, in the case described obviously did not rupture . So using proper  medical terminology we would say the pregnancy had not ruptured but the fallopian tube possibly had (dangerous from a bleeding viewpoint). Putting it another way - If the pregnancy had actually ruptured, as claimed, there would be no embryonic sac to hold the embryo because that's what ruptures. Sloppy terminology for a doctor.

The rest of the story strikes me as frankly ludicrous.  We are to believe that all these perfectly developed fingers and toes just disappeared as soon as the embryo died? Long before telescopes were well enough developed to show good detail some astronomers mapped canals on Mars. Some people will simply see what they want to see. It appears some people believe that 'pre born' is like 'pre cooked'.  Just add water and you have a complete baby.

 This information is well known among the more educated members of the Anti Abortion community. Dr. Jack (Willke) obviously knows he's lying. Still the story appears on web site after web site and the same lie is spread as gospel. This is one of the times when a copy of the real information is useful for comparison. I give the benefit of the doubt and apply 8 weeks gestational age to the description.
 

Eighth Week: The distinction of arm and forearm, and of thigh and leg, is apparent, *as well as the interdigital clefts.* The capsule of the lens and pupillary mernbrane, the interventricular and commencement of the interauricular septum, the salivary glands, the spleen  and suprarenal capsules are distinguishable. The larynx begins to become cartilaginous. All the vertebral bodies are cartilaginous. The points of ossification for the ulna, radius, fibula, and ilium make their appearance. The two halves of the hard palat e unite. The sympathetic nerves are now for the first time to be discerned. Gray's Anatomy

So we have on some of the sites Rockwell claiming that at  six weeks LMP - or four weeks GA - this perfect embryo was doing the breast stroke in it's little swimming pool with perfect little fingers and toes.  Even if we allow for the usual games these people frequently play and say the time was actually six weeks GA we are still two weeks before the description from Gray's Anatomy.  Grays talks of the blunt end of the arms beginning to divide but Rockwell saw perfect little fingers.  Which do you believe?

Well a large part of the problem is in the method of presentation. There are actually two items involved in this issue and the real misrepresentation is in presenting them together as if they were associated.

First is the words of Rockwell - which Grays and the further analysis above,  shows to be false and misleading. However the Rockwell quote refers to 8 gestation weeks which probably means he was talking about a 10 week LMP fetus. Given this what he describes is somewhat accurate except for the change he alleges to have happened when the sac was broken. It would also be interesting to find out whether this was an abdominal pregnancy as a result of the fallopian tube rupture and exactly how this sac was supposed to have been retrieved.

The second item is the picture itself.  It was a picture - apparently - taken by Robert Wolfe, a medical photographer, - and claims to be a picture of a six week GA or 8 week LMP embryo.  Some sites simply present the picture with this information.

Putting the picture alongside the Rockwell quote is purposely misleading because the Rockwell quote has nothing to do with the picture and they are talking about two totally different gestational ages.
 

 And still they lie.

 The "teardrop baby" (or is it the condom baby) of these sites is one of the symptomatic instances of rampant deception in the Abortion Opposition movement and is carried out by those in the the leadership who know well what they are doing is lying.

There is one set of circumstances that could possibly result in a sac retrieval like this without having the tube actually rupture. When Priests For Life were asked how to deal with a tubal ectopic pregnancy they answered:

Direct abortion is never permissible for any reason, direct meaning that the action deliberately destroys the child, and intends to do so. Sometimes ectopic pregnancies are handled this way, killing the child but leaving the tube intact. However, if what is done is that the damaged portion of the tube is removed because of the threat it poses to the mother, that is not a direct abortion, even if the child dies. What is done is the same thing that would be done if the tube were damaged from some other cause. The mother is not saved by the death of the child but by the removal of the tube. Because the death of the child in this case is a side effect which is not intended, and because the saving of the mother's life is not brought about by the death of the child, such a removal of the damaged portion of the tube is morally permissible. The ethical rule that applies here is called the Principle of the Double Effect."

On A Different Note:            The infamous 5-10,000 deaths "quote".

This lie above is an often told tale, which has gained legend status,  and is somewhat like the famous story which appears on a number of Abortion Opposition sites and which states  Abortion Supporters claimed 5,000 to 10,000 deaths per year when abortion was illegal. That quote is supposed to have originated in a Planned Parenthood presentation in court but there is no court record to prove it. I've asked often for a source of an actual publication, pre-Roe, that contains this ridiculou s claim of 5-10,000 deaths a year. No one seems to be able to find it. Again, all we have is Abortion Opponents lying about what people said. More and more is seems that the only thing Abortion opposition is based on is lies and deceit.

Bernard Nathanson - a founder and director of NARAL who later decided it was more lucrative to tell anti-abortion people what they wanted to hear - claims that NARAL always gave the figures as 5-10,000 when asked about deaths.  He claims it was used continually by abortion supporters before Roe v Wade as a justification for legalizing abortion.  Is Nathanson telling the truth now - as an anti abortionist - when he was an admitted liar he claims as an abortion supporter.  This is one case where we should be easily able to verify the truth of his words.  If he is telling the truth, and NARAL and other bodies who were fighting to legalize abortion in the 1960s made this 5-10,000 claim then it should appear many times in the contemporary news and trial publications of that day.  We should be able to find it quoted easily in many many press reports of the debate and court cases concerning legalizing abortion at that time.  You won't find it however.  Nathanson is lying. He was a liar as a NARAL representative and is a liar as an abortion opposition representative.  Just as his propaganda movie is simply an elaborate lie so his words in this instance are a also a lie.  He's another leopard that has not changed his spots.

 The quote appears to have originated in a detective magazine. The actual source of that number is probably the book Crimes Without Victims by Edwin Schur which was published in 1965. He writes:

 "It may be useful at this point to comment briefly on the question of the deaths that occur in illegal abortions. Early estimates placed the annual number of such deaths in this country at 8000 or more. As late as 1951, one expert suggested there still might be 5000-6000 such deaths annually. 42"

 Footnote 42 is to Russell S. Fisher, "Criminal Abortion," Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, (July-August 1951).

 It should be remembered that since abortion was illegal in the 50's fudging the numbers was a part of the needed tools in order to preserve both the good reputation of the woman and the appearance of propriety and in a totally more repressive era the dignity of the family. There is no longer any need to do so since abortion is now legal.

 If any abortion opponent could actually provide documentary evidence of that quote other than the one I just provided I'd certainly be interested but in the absence of proof, and since it is absent in contemporary publications of the day,  we can deduce fabrication.

 Pro-Liars continue to trot it out however despite the fact that it's real origins are a detective magazine.